When Tom Brady talks, the NFL listens.
Not surprisingly, there was considerable backlash after the 46-year-old took aim at the standard of play in the league this season.
“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in the NFL today,” he said recently on the Stephen A. Smith Show. “I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past.”
The comments drew a scathing response from former Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith.
“I think he’s playing in the least competitive division in the history of the NFL,” Smith said on “Sunday NFL Countdown” last weekend.
He added: “When you come out of training camp in the biggest cupcake division, you have a ticket to the playoffs right away.”
Now, Brady is starting to explain his controversial point with the example of another athletic GOAT.
During the latest episode of Brady’s “Let’s Go” podcast, the seven-time Super Bowl champion insisted that the current generation of NFL quarterbacks lacks the ability to solve mid-game issues.
To illustrate his point, Brady cited Floyd Mayweather’s boxing IQ and his ability to outsmart his opponents on the way to a perfect 50-0 professional record.
“I love the way Floyd Mayweather fights,” Brady said. “He never got hit, and he won every fight. Why? Because he always knew what the problem was.
“He studied the problem, thought about it when he woke up in the morning, and thought about it when he went to bed at night.
“It was his life and it was his life too.
“I try to play chess and I want to always be three steps ahead of you. There’s a lot more to checkers than chess these days.”
Brady added that the development of young quarterbacks is hampered by a lack of trust from coaches.
The five-time Super Bowl MVP believes today’s quarterbacks don’t have the ability or ability to change game strategies on the fly.
“Coaches don’t trust the quarterback enough and they try to control the game on the sidelines,” Brady said.
“You want to see a good quarterback fix the game.
“That’s what Peyton (Manning) and I do, that’s what me and Drew Brees do, that’s what me and Philip Rivers do, that’s what Aaron Rodgers does .
“That’s how you take your game to the next level, you need that last stroke of the pencil.
“That’s how I solve problems, use my brain and try to predict.”